![]() But thanks to unexpected insights and data gained from our own urgent need to understand the earth’s climate, we have learned that there is much more to the story of the celestial signs that followed Caesar’s death. We might attribute them to the human mind’s infinite ability to imagine connections where there are none, or more generously, we could try to understand these reports as culturally meaningful texts, a symbolic language through which the Romans experienced the world. It is easy enough to dismiss these observations as the superstitions of a prescientific age. ![]() According to Pliny the Elder, writing a century after the fact, “portentous and protracted eclipses of the sun occur, such as the one after the murder of Caesar…which caused almost a whole year’s continuous gloom.” Plutarch was even more vivid in describing “the obscuration of the sun’s rays”:ĭuring all that year its orb rose pale and without radiance, while the heat that came down from it was slight and ineffectual, so that the air in its circulation was dark and heavy owing to the feebleness of the warmth that penetrated it, and the fruits, imperfect and half-ripe, withered away and shriveled up on account of the coldness of the atmosphere. On this point the Roman sources are unusually insistent and coherent. Befitting the demise of the larger-than-life Caesar, the sun absconded for a year. And it did not just disappear for a passing moment, as in a normal eclipse. On the death of Caesar, even the sun disappeared. Shakespeare, with a dash of poetic license, immortalized these forebodings: “Beware the ides of March.” On March 15, 44 bc, Julius Caesar was hacked to death by his jealous political rivals, plunging the Romans once more into the nightmare of civil war. Bad dreams and rumbling heavens followed. ![]() A bull sacrificed to the gods was found to be without a heart, and the presiding priest duly warned Caesar that he was in imminent danger. Horses that Caesar had dedicated to the river Rubicon refused to eat and wept instead. A kingbird ( avis regaliolus) was savagely ripped to pieces in the Theater of Pompey. The ancient biographer Suetonius gave a summary catalogue of these signs and warnings. And soon disturbing portents began to appear. But resentment simmered among the old-guard senatorial faction that Caesar had brought to heel. Grand new campaigns of conquest were rumored. For a moment it must have felt as if there were order in the cosmos. Julius Caesar was then at the height of his powers, and the award of the consulship to Antony signaled a full reconciliation with his faithful lieutenant after a brief chill. There are hardly two more eminent names in the annals of Roman history. To the Romans, who named their years after the highest officials in the res publica, what we call the year 44 bc was the year when Julius Caesar and Mark Antony were consuls. The year of his death seemed to start under hopeful auspices. The Romans were great believers in omens, and an event as world-shaking as the assassination of Julius Caesar was apportioned its predictable share of signs in the collective memory. Audio brought to you by Curio, a Lapham’s Quarterly partner
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